Part II - nine

Later that night, curled up in bed with Ginny after love, half asleep and her mind wandering, Rebecca said, “My cousin is getting married soon, I think…” 

“You think?” Ginny asked, not far from sleep herself. 

“I just dreamed it,” the sleepy blonde explained. “I’ll call her tomorrow… Gotta’ give her our new number anyway…” 

The following day would prove Rebecca’s premonition correct when she telephoned her cousin, Eleanor (more like a sister really), down south in San Pia. 

“That’s right, Becca!” Elly was happy but not overly surprised to hear that her younger cousin had intuited the news of her wedding from hundreds of miles away. This was not the first such incident, after all. “Ryan and I are finally making it official!” 

Eleanor would ask Rebecca to be a bridesmaid, of course. Rebecca would take a leave from The Rolling Bear, head down to San Pia with Ginny for the wedding. It was a perfect opportunity to introduce Ginny to her family - the aunt, uncle and cousins she had grown up with since the age of 5. 

Now, back in the night of our current moment, Virginia and Rebecca burrowed deeper into each other and deeper into sleep. Two pairs of eyelids fluttered as the sleeping women began to dream each of the other. 

In their simultaneously joint and respective dream, Rebecca spoke to Ginny. “Nightbook is my favorite show,” she said, “but I hate Stinky Pete.” 

Ginny pulled a lizard, small to medium in size and blue in color, from her purse, offered it to Rebecca. Rebecca shrugged a casual “no thank you” and continued, “I prefer the episodes with Valentine and the other vampires.” 

Ginny nodded, flowers falling from her hair. “I know what you mean,” she agreed. “I love Valentine myself. And, of course, Svetlana and the Ghost Yeti…” 

Carl Jung passed through the room and both women waved him a cheery greeting. “Hello ladies…” Herr Jung smiled, moved on, and was gone. 

“But,” continued Ginny, “Stinky Pete is a character we will definitely be seeing more of in the future.” 

Here a herd of miniature horses thundered across the floor of their dream.

Now Rebecca nodded, her hair changing from blonde to green to black with each movement of her head. “I know what you mean” she said. “I know what you dream…”

Both women smiled in their sleep and snuggled closer. Around them the shadows of the night darkened room shifted and, a sound not unlike the skitter of windblown leaves, tittered…

Part II - eight

Nightbook 

episode 213 - Stinky Pete and The Nightmare Man

Stinky Pete sits glowering in a far, dark corner of the room. He sits hunched in upon himself in his tattered, black raincoat so that, from a certain distance, he appears as a mass of lumpy stones placed in some vaguely humanoid form. If anybody stood close enough - not much of a likelihood considering that he was, after all, Stinky Pete, the nowhere man of Zenith Falls – they might see the glint of pale light reflected from the black lenses of his fixed and staring eyes.

Across the room, reflecting the pale light of the place back from her golden skin better and brighter than it had been, Alyssa Grove was uneasy. She felt like she was being watched. Her skin was crawling. Crossing her arms across her chest, she appeared suddenly defensive to the young man before her, who had been plying his woo upon her with increasing desperation.

"Listen,” he said, “Can I buy you a drink?”

Alyssa nodded vacantly, her eyes dragging the room slowly from side to side. “Just a cooler,” she whispered. “Bartles and James or something.”

He nodded. “I’ll be right back!”

But Alyssa was already gone. She’d found a dark shape in a far corner. It was from there that the flesh crawling gaze emitted. “Stinky Pete?” she muttered only half aloud. The air between she and him rippled briefly and brought to her nose the dark and pungent waft of soiled laundry and unwashed humanity, the slow decay of illness consuming corrupt flesh. She wrinkled her nose and gagged a little.

“Alyssa?” The voice that spoke her name was a relief.

“Nighty?” she queried, choking back the bile in her throat.

From the darkness at the back of her mind, and simultaneously, from all of the shadows shifting around her in the small nightclub, stepped a tall, gaunt figure faceless and all in black. This was The Nightmare Man, Alyssa’s new best friend.

“Is there anything wrong, my Dear?” He spoke and his voice slithered clammily over your skin and through your mind. Or was it the other way ‘round?

Alyssa laughed; a short, brisk laugh. The thought of Stinky Pete giving her the evil eye might have concerned her not that long ago. Now she had The Nightmare Man wrapped around her finger, there was little that could worry her. “Nothing much, my shadowy friend,” she smiled. “Just a black hole by the name of Stinky Pete, who’s making me a little nervous with his unrelenting glare.

“Pete and I are old friends,” Intoned The Nightmare Man. “I will remind him.”

Folded in the shadows of his now fetid corner, Pete closed his eyes and saw The Nightmare Man coming. He moved not through the darkness so much as within it, emerging from the shifting eddies of light and shadow behind Pete’s eyes to stand a living shadow before him.

“Your attentions are not wanted, Stinky One.” The Nightmare Man sent rattle snakes down Pete’s cerebral cortex, and laughed.

Pete gurgled a bit, twitched briefly and became stinkier still…

Part II - seven

Rebecca Raine

broke my heart again,

            this time right in two.

             Rebecca Raine

come back again.

I’ll give the pieces to you.

 - James Hollowbrook –

 Ginny, reading the couplets and their byline aloud couldn’t help but smile. Not at the poignant and all too true, she knew, sentiment, but rather the clear and simple wordplay. She offered Rebecca the thick saddle stitched publication, apparently James Hollowbrook’s contributor copy. “My piece is on page 58,” she said. She had received her own copy the day before. “It’s not about you, ‘Becca doll, I’m glad to say,” she glanced at the title, The Broken Heart Review, black and white and red across the top of the cover. “I didn’t know you at the time. In fact, I think the notebook where I first wrote it is older than you!”

Rebecca, taking the magazine from Ginny’s outstretched hand, smiled – the clear, golden smile which had been the first of her many charms to waylay Ginny’s heart. “Oh come on, Gin, you’re only six years older than me!” Opening the magazine and flipping to page 58, she said, “And who could have broken your heart, I wonder?”

Rebecca’s brown eyes found Ginny’s name on the page first, at the bottom just above the page number. At the top of the page, the title of Ginny’s poem caused Rebecca to laugh.  “O Chocolate! My Chocolate!” she spoke it aloud, evoking the chuckling ghost of Whitman, and then proceeded to read the rest:

When I was young

you were the only one

to kiss my lips

and tickle my tongue.

 Now I’m older,

my body has changed,

and things can never

be the same.

 I used to love

your bars and chips

but you broke my heart

and went straight to my hips.

– Virginia Jason –

Rebecca laughed again. “That’s hilarious, Ginny!” Now she curled her brow. “But you eat whatever you want and you’re gorgeous!”

“Or at least that’s the impression I give.” Ginny smiled.

“Speaking of which…” Rebecca placed The Broken Heart Review on the table and rose from her chair. “Don’t we have some of that Rocky Road ice cream left?”

“And an episode of Nightbook on the player,” Ginny observed.

“Ghosts and postres,” Rebecca smiled. “You are my kinda’ girl, Virginia Jason.”

Ginny laughed and then stopped, recalling suddenly a similar statement that Gordon had made early in their relationship: “Videos and cookies! You’re my kinda’ girl, Ginny.”

Well it made sense that people she was attracted to would share her likes; sweets and b movies, for example. Of course she was well beyond “attracted to” Rebecca. But hadn’t she once thought the same of Gordon? Looking up at Rebecca’s beaming face, she felt all doubt wither and fade. There was room for nothing but love in her life now. She had certainly never felt that way about Gordon. “I hope I’m your only girl, Becca.”

Rebecca, returning from the ‘fridge now with the frosted barrel of ice cream and a spoon, said, “You’re my only person, Ginny.”

Ginny grinned in her seat. “You are so beautiful with that ice cream in your hands. I could just eat you up.”

Rebecca offered her the spoon.